The Short Answer
India's new D2C brands look alike because they borrowed one aesthetic: rounded sans-serif wordmarks, pastel palettes, lowercase names and soft lifestyle photography. It signalled 'modern startup' in 2019. In a market estimated at roughly $87 billion in 2025 and crowded with tens of thousands of digital-first brands, it now signals 'one of many'.
What the Look Consists Of
The D2C template has five recognisable parts. Most new Indian brands in skincare, supplements, snacks, home and personal care use at least three of them, which is why their Instagram grids and marketplace listings are hard to tell apart without reading the name.
- A geometric sans-serif wordmark, often lowercase, often with generous letter spacing.
- A pastel or muted palette: sage, blush, butter yellow, terracotta.
- A friendly invented name, two syllables, sometimes with a dropped vowel or an unusual spelling.
- Lifestyle photography with hard sunlight, a hand holding the product and a plain coloured backdrop.
- A cheerful, casual tone with the same jokes about Mondays and self-care.
The style was borrowed from American direct-to-consumer brands such as Glossier, Away and Warby Parker, which themselves converged on it. Writers in the US called the result 'blanding' years ago; Indian D2C reached the same place a few years later.
Why Founders Choose It
Founders pick the D2C look because it lowers perceived risk. It resembles brands investors have funded and customers have bought, it photographs well, and it is easy for a small team to produce. The problem is that every competitor makes the same calculation, so the safe choice stops being safe once everyone has made it.
- Pattern matching. A pitch deck that looks like a funded brand feels fundable.
- Shared references. Designers draw from the same Pinterest boards, Behance projects and template libraries.
- Platform pressure. Clean, minimal thumbnails perform well, so everyone makes clean, minimal thumbnails.
- Speed. A template identity can be live in a week. A distinctive one takes thinking.
What It Costs You
Blanding costs most where D2C brands actually sell: in a marketplace grid and a social feed, where a customer gives each brand under a second. If your listing looks like the nine around it, the customer chooses on rating, price or delivery date. Your brand, which was supposed to justify a premium, contributes nothing to the decision.
| Where | What happens with a generic look |
|---|---|
| Marketplace search results | Your thumbnail blends into the grid; price and rating decide the click. |
| Instagram and Reels | Content gets seen but not attributed. Viewers remember the idea and forget the brand. |
| Retail shelves and quick commerce | Pastel packs disappear against other pastel packs, especially in small app tiles. |
| Repeat purchase | Customers search for 'that pink serum' and find a competitor first. |
| Paid media efficiency | Ads that are not recognisable without the logo build less memory per rupee spent. |
The underlying research is consistent: assets work when they are both known and unique to you. We explain the method in how to build distinctive brand assets.
How To Stand Out Without Looking Strange
You do not need to abandon minimalism to stand out. You need one or two choices no competitor in your category has made, then the discipline to use them everywhere for years. Category conventions that help buyers find you can stay; the parts that only exist because everyone copied each other can go.
- Map the category. Screenshot the top 20 brands in your category on Amazon, Nykaa, Blinkit or wherever you sell. Note their colours, fonts and pack shapes. Whatever appears in more than half is a convention, not a differentiator.
- Keep the useful conventions. Customers need to recognise a face serum as a face serum. Keep the cues that signal the category.
- Break one rule on purpose. A saturated colour in a pastel category, a serif in a sans-serif category, a bold pack shape, an illustrated world instead of stock lifestyle shots.
- Design for the thumbnail. Test your main listing image at roughly 300 pixels wide next to the top ten results. If you cannot spot it in two seconds, neither can a customer.
- Give the voice an opinion. Most D2C copy is interchangeable. A specific point of view travels further than another cheerful caption; see why every brand sounds the same.
Packaging Is Where It Matters Most
For product brands, the pack is the brand: it appears in the listing, in the unboxing video and on the bathroom shelf for months. A distinctive pack also has to carry mandatory Indian labelling, which limits how much space branding gets. Planning both together avoids the common result of a beautiful mockup that fails compliance.
Our packaging design guide for India covers the FSSAI and Legal Metrology requirements, and our product identity work for Afternote, Soaked and Tanline shows what a distinctive system looks like across a range.
Where We Fit
Kalex designs product brand identities and packaging systems for D2C brands, with 3D renders and motion so the brand works on marketplaces and social from day one. See our brand identity service or tell us about your product.